Minivan on Fire (2007, 12.6MB, 32 sec)
So…I wrote the comment below in 2004 about the poem (below)
by poet-artist-programmer-polymath Lewis LaCook
but it fits the movie making too, I think.
The poem I reproduce here because it’s great &
because I can.
…*such* great work Lewis.
There’s the delirious and gorgeous imagery that has
always been such an attractive component of your work,
but here also (and did I not notice it so much before
or has it been slowly crystallizing?) a rigorous,
almost steely control of the materials.
The sense of storytelling, the incorporation of
dialogue, the confidence to mix the heady stuff with
the almost prosaic…
a complete pleasure…
michael
— Lewis LaCook wrote:
I had this feeling that I was
worth loving, and you let me
have it: a month of solid
silence and invisibility, and you’ve
forgotten me now, I’m sure:
haven’t even taken the movies back.
I feel I might’ve excited you. True,
you said, “You’re mischievous,
undermining, it gets you hot
to be bad,” with the heroin
of your eyes pushing through me,
“I need all your attention.”
Client status: Connected.
In cramped shoes I’m
transparent on milk
ice: sliding over islands, mortar,
crystals lateral with morphine
lapsed into strings,
stillness; my lace.
Cerebral, but rebellious.
The secret to rolling a great joint
is to roll it tight enough to smoke well
but loose enough to let any left-
over stems elude piercing the paper.
I feel it might be exciting
to feel loved. Someone rubs me
until I blossum. Until it
rains on my tongue. This is free.
There are only so many
kinds of sense. One in which
you’re thick, surrendered
to golds and reds, wear glasses
and have supper with your
mother. Meanwhile, outside
our encampment, fat
velvet fires rescue air from
almost total transparency.
I suck up files from a remote
location for work. Wake up
with my eyes already sunk,
jerk off: get high. Client status:
Connected. A tartly-intelligent
girl with her hand on my belly.
She says she likes it too much.
She has all my attention.
Character sets legitimize
where the pre-dawn wind
plies from you in heavy draughts
your childhood, your child, rubber
nipples: reading under a passive
milk of electric, not walls.
They hug cattle before they
shoot them in the brain.
I sleep past waking.
Everyone will be infinitely home soon.
I was dreaming in blush sundaes,
before, though: we are the wasps
that would rather sting themselves
to death, if that means we escape
a natural terminal port: we’re
those literal motherfuckers
who will not hover, but sparkler
and cackle like it’s all that’s
holding us down. I hate the royal
we. Dreaming about licking
the heart of red, the pith of gold,
cleaning you of stalwart
impurities. Ever feel
like you’re just marking a beat
in a line. Smoke orally
inflates the room. Filtration
flirts with purity the way eightball
chicks glom to money;
it makes them feel loved. Even
common houseplants know
where the sun is, swoon and go
limp when she’s gone. I’m still
waiting for that Saturday you promised me
not thinking about me at all not thinking about
you at all not thinking about you at all.
